Ley Lines
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Avebury - Its Sacred Geometry

Avebury from the air with a
crop-circle close by

View
looking to the west. The North entrance is on the right and the
South entrance the left.

Note: I am at the moment engaged in a very precise survey of Northern and Southern Inner circles at Avebury. When this is complete we should be in a much better place to confirm its underlying geometry.

Avebury
The Avebury henge, although not as well known as Stonehenge,
dwarfs the latter in its size and structure. Antiquarian John
Aubrey writing around 1665 stated Avebury 'did as much excel
Stonehenge, as a Cathedral does a Parish Church'. Built over a
period of time commencing around 2700 BC it covers a levelled
circular area of some 28.5 acres with a diameter of over a quarter
of a mile and still includes today a number of massive stones
weighing up to ninety tons. The ravages of human despoliation
over several hundred years has seen the destruction of much of
this temple site, which originally boasted over six hundred large
stones, few of which now remain. Re-erection work this century
has restored something of its original grandeur and, despite
the missing stones, it is still a very impressive place to visit.

Henge monuments, distributed throughout Britain (although mainly
lying on the western side of the country) were first built around
3,000 BC. They comprise a circular bank with a ditch on the inside
making them useless for defence and, as such, it is inferred
that they must have been established for religious purposes.
In most cases the bank and ditch would have been no more than
a few feet in height. With Stonehenge the work of the humble
earthworm, over time, has reduced this feature to being now almost
indiscernible.

Not so with Avebury, where it is still very prominent. The ditch
alone originally extended to a depth of around 10 metres (33
feet) whilst the bank rose to a height of about 6 metres (20
feet). Whilst statistics can be boring Aubrey Burl in his book
Prehistoric Avebury has estimated that the ninety thousand cubic
metres of chalk removed from the ditch, which is over a kilometre
in length, had about the same cubic content as the seven pyramids
erected by the Vth dynasty Egyptian pharaohs between 2560 and
2420 BC; a time comparable to the building of the Avebury monument.
It has been calculated that the bank and ditch alone at Avebury
would have taken 250 people over twenty years to complete. This
would have been an enormous undertaking for the small community
that was thought to have lived in the area at the time. At its
completion it was the premier megalithic site in Britain and
still remains so today.

I have on many occasions throughout the ensuing years and at
different seasons stood within the precincts of this mysterious
place, my body tingling with the "atmosphere" that
I have sensed there. Often I have leant against one of the giant
Sarsen stones, wondering at the people who built this edifice.
What was its purpose? Why spend so much time and effort unless
there was a powerful reason? What further secrets had this place
still to reveal?

If the construction of the bank and ditch was a mammoth task
the erection of the Sarsen stones was an equally monumental undertaking.
Although a relatively local and extremely hard rock, these giant
blocks would have had to have been dragged several miles before
being erected in their pre-determined positions. In 1934 an experienced
foreman and twelve inexperienced workman took five days to re-erect
a relatively small eight ton stone in the nearby Avenue.

The western edge of the circumference of
the Eastern great circle of the Marlborough Downs passes through
the Avebury henge.

The Hidden Geometry of the Avebury Henge
The geometry
of the Avebury henge contains a number of interesting features
and is multi-layered. What is shown here represents but a small
part of what might originally have been intended.

As can be seen
the henge is not an exact circle with only the south-eastern
part conforming to the circumference of a circle which also touches
the stone circle in the south-west and the north. That nearly
a quadrant (G) conforms to the circle
shows that the Neolithic builders were quite capable of creating
true circles when they wanted which is also demonstrated by the
two inner circles (northern and southern). That larger parts
of this monument were not circular must therefore have been deliberate
with some greater plan in mind.

About ten stones
in the southern-western segment form an alignment to point B which is set just outside of the southern
entrance. Point A is represented by a
stone in the north-eastern corner and point C sits in the middle of the western entrance of
the henge.

In the primary
triangle ABC line AB is on a true north/south
axis.

Both triangles ADC and BDC are right angular (90 degrees). Therefore
alignment DC is due east/west.

Point E is the placement of a huge stone called
the Obelisk which has sadly now disappeared. This stone estimated
to be over twenty feet tall would have cast a shadow on the sunrise
of the equinoxes towards the western entrance of the henge. This
is one way in which the henge also represented an astronomical
calculator. Further solsticial alignments can be seen with the obelisk in that the setting sun of mid-winter would have cast a shadow towards the eastern entrance of the henge (see fig. 2). Additional seasonal alignments can be found between
point C (western entrance) and
point T (eastern entrance) which
picks up the May day sunrise. This give further evidence that
the Celtic calendar had its origins in the Neolithic period or,
at least, a similar calendar was used then.

Fig. 2. A view of the Avebury henge from Google Earth showing the alignments from the Obelisk for the solstices and equinoxes. Shadow lines would emphasize these alignments.

The internal
angles of triangle ADC are 40-50-90 which means that the ratio of side AD:DC = 5:6

BDC is a 3:4:5 Pythagorean
triangle. We can therefore state that the ratio of AB:DC = 19:12. These numbers
have significance in calendrical assessments. 19, for example
being the number of years in the lunar metatonic cycle.

The size of the
two inner circles are determined by the line AQ which passes through the centre (O) of the large circle. AQ and AB are tangents to the southern inner circle and
line CD passes through it's
centre. The northern circle is of similar size to the southern.
Few stones now remain in this circle.

The Southern Inner Circle
This circle has now been thoroughly investigated as part of a survey to fully understand the geometry of the henge. For futher details please click here.